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Building a Workforce for the Information Economy
and engineering, 30.1 percent in 1991, and 33 percent in 1993 and thereafter (through 1996). The comparable figures in all science and engineering categories (including social sciences) are 19.3 percent, 23.4 percent, and 24.7 percent. 45 Data from the 1998 Taulbee survey (covering a more restricted but also more elite group of educational institutions) indicate that 40 percent of CS and CE Ph.D.s and 49 percent of CS and CE master 's degree recipients were awarded to nonresident aliens.46 If these individuals return to their home nations, their expertise becomes unavailable to the U.S. workforce; if they do not, they count against various quotas for nonresident workers.
The large proportion of foreign students at the postbaccalaureate level has sometimes raised concerns that foreign graduate students are keeping qualified U.S. students out of graduate programs. Systematic data related to this issue are unavailable, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the relatively low fraction of U.S. students in graduate programs is due largely to their lack of willingness to go to graduate school immediately after graduation instead of accepting a position in industry.47
45
By contrast, the fraction of bachelor's degrees awarded to foreign students has been about 7 percent of all the bachelor's degrees awarded in math, computer science, and engineering, compared to about 3.7 percent of all bachelor's degrees awarded in all science and engineering categories (including social sciences). At the doctoral level, foreign students have accounted for between 45 percent and 51 percent of all doctoral degrees in math, computer science, and engineering. The corresponding range for all science and engineering categories (including social sciences) is 25.7 percent to 34.9 percent, but in neither case is there a clear trend in the data (which for doctoral degree recipients ends in 1997). See National Science Board. 2000. Science and Engineering Indicators—2000. Arlington, Va.: National Science Foundation, Appendix Tables 4-35 (bachelor's), 4-38 (master's), and 4-39 (Ph.D.).
46
These figures may understate the fraction in the nonresident alien category. Freeman and Aspray, commenting on the 1994 Taulbee survey, point out that this category is supposed to include only domestic students with these backgrounds, but that in 1994 the numbers (around 17 percent) looked “unusually large to the computer scientists responsible for managing the survey” and that some of these students may be Asian-Pacific Island foreign nationals on visas. See Freeman, Peter, and William Aspray. 1999. The Supply of Information Technology Workers in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Computing Research Association. Available online at <www.cra.org./reports/wits/>, p. 91, n. 70.
47
For example, a spot check at MIT indicated that foreign applications for computer science graduate programs in 1999 accounted for 46 percent of all applications to these programs but only 30 percent of the admissions. At the University of Washington, foreign applications for computer science accounted for 71 percent of applications, but only 37 percent of admissions. While the exact figures at MIT and the University of Washington might not be characteristic of other institutions, the relationship of applications to admissions is likely to be similar at other comparable schools. Assuming that foreign students and U.S. students are of comparable average quality, the pattern provides some evidence that foreign students are not displacing U.S. students from graduate programs.
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